Stephan: It should surprise no one that the carbon industries will do anything, spend anything, harm anything, to protect their profits, long term climate change damage be damned. Here is one of the many examples of this.
Pro-industry groups in New Mexico are pushing out what some experts have called ‘sky is falling’ messaging. Composite: Getty
The oil and gas industry wants to play a word-and-picture association game with you. Think of four images: a brightly colored backpack stuffed with pencils, a smiling teacher with a tablet tucked under her arm, a pair of glasses resting on a stack of pastel notebooks, and a gleaming school bus welcoming a young student onboard.
“What do all of these have in common?” a 6 April Facebook post by the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association (NMOGA), asked. “They are powered by oil and natural gas!”
Here in New Mexico – the fastest-warming and most water-stressed state in the continental US, where wildfires have recently devoured over 120,000 acres and remain uncontained – the oil and gas industry is coming out in force to deepen the region’s dependence on fossil fuels. Their latest tactic: to position oil and gas as a patron saint of education. Powerful interest groups have deployed a months-long campaign to depict schools and children’s wellbeing as under threat if […]
Stephan: The Republicans want to indoctrinate children not educate them. The Republican Party does not like public "free" education and for at least a decade has been undermining public education, and cutting its funding where and when they can. They don't want educated children because they tend to grow up and go to college and become educated adults, and educated adults tend to vote as Democrats, whereas poorly educated people are easily manipulated by playing to their fears, hates, and resentments and tend to vote as Republicans.
Republican Representative Steve Drazkowski speaks in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 23, 2019. Credit: Glen Stubbe / Star Tribune / Getty
A far-right Minnesota state legislator, upset with increases in state funding for early childhood education, has called for the complete eradication of a legislative committee tasked with creating and funding programs meant to give children in the state access to such learning.
Republican State Rep. Steve Drazkowski decried increases in publicly funded early childhood education while speaking on the floor of the Minnesota House of Representatives this week. His approach to child-rearing is short-sighted, as he didn’t appear to address in his comments how parents would manage to be able to raise their children without help from the government, which provides a vast amount of funding for child care in the state.
“We should get rid of the early childhood committee,” Drazkowski said while lamenting the funding increases during a debate on an omnibus spending bill. “We should let parents raise their kids until they’re five at least, before the government comes with a school bus, backs it up to […]
Stephan: The United States has a truly shameful maternal mortality rate. For example, a woman in the United States is almost FOUR times as likely to die giving birth than a woman in Greece, and SEVENTEEN times more likely than a woman giving birth in Poland. And if Roe is overturned, as seems likely, the American death rate of women will almost certainly get worse.
Credit: Franck Ferville /Agence VU / Redux
If the U.S. Supreme Court does as its leaked draft opinion says and strikes down Roe v. Wade, researchers expect that in the following year, roughly 75,000 people who want, but can’t get, abortions will give birth instead.
They’ll do so in a country where pregnancy and childbirth continue to become more dangerous.
Government data released this year shows that U.S. maternal deaths increased significantly in the first year of the pandemic, going from 754 in 2019 to 861 in 2020, a 14% jump. The death rate for Black women was almost three times higher than that for white women.
The stats for 2020 were no surprise. As ProPublica detailed in 2017, the U.S. has fallen behind other wealthy nations and many less affluent ones where deaths linked to pregnancy and childbirth have plummeted over the past two decades. Deaths are only one yardstick for measuring maternal health. For every U.S. woman who dies as a result of pregnancy or childbirth, up to 70 suffer dangerous and sometimes life-threatening complications.
LUIS NOE-BUSTAMANTE, NEIL G. RUIZ, MARK HUGO LOPEZ and KHADIJAH EDWARDS, - Pew Research Center
Stephan: I have to be honest with you my readers; I am revolted and tired of my fellow Whites' racism. It is weak, it is stupid, and it tells the world a lot more about the Whites than it does about the people of color they fear and hate. More than that this nastiness is a form of sabotage of the wellbeing of the American culture.
Amid ongoing reports of racially motivated threats and attacks against Asians in the United States, a majority of Asian Americans say violence against them is increasing, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Most Asian Americans also worry about being threatened or attacked, with a third saying they have changed their daily routine because of these concerns.
Overall, about six-in-ten Asian adults (63%) say violence against Asian Americans in the U.S. is increasing, while 19% say there has not been much change and 8% say it is decreasing. This is down somewhat since last year, when 81% of Asian Americans said violence against them was increasing.
In an open-ended question that accompanied the 2021 survey, a majority of those who perceived rising violence against Asian Americans attributed it to former President Donald Trump, racism, COVID-19 and its impact on the nation, and scapegoating and blaming Asian people for the pandemic.
In the new survey, about one-in-five Asian Americans say they worry daily (7%) or almost daily (14%) that they might be threatened or attacked because […]
Stephan: He looks like a thug. He acts like a thug, a murderer actually, and of course, Andrew Wilhoite is a Republican. When I tell you that the Republican Party is a criminal organization, I say that because those are the facts.
Andrew Wilhoite, Republican candidate, who won his GOP nomination while he was in jail for murdering his wife
Despite being jailed after allegedly murdering his wife after she filed for divorce, an Indiana man advanced in a local election in Tuesday’s primary election.
“Andrew Wilhoite, who’s suspected of fatally striking his wife with a gallon-sized concrete flower pot, secured a spot Tuesday as one of three Republican candidates in the race for a seat on the Clinton Township Board,” the Indianapolis Starreports. “The 40-year-old has been incarcerated in the Boone County Jail since March after police said he told investigators he threw a concrete flower pot at his wife, Nikki Wilhoite, the night before and dropped her body over the side of a bridge.”
Brad King, co-director of the Indiana Election Division, explained that under Indiana law, Wilhoite is allowed to run.
“Under our legal system, every person is innocent until proven guilty,” he explained. “If a candidate is ultimately convicted, then depending upon the timing of that conviction, the person can be replaced on the […]
